Education Planning


Dan Rice of World Vision* poses these questions to us, “How in the world can I help our entire family to discover where their treasure and heart is, and enable them to see how important this question is? Then, how do I coach them to decide for themselves what their next steps might be on their new life long journey?"

Our response to these questions will in large part, in a most significant way, impact our children in this life and in the Life to come.

While this page addresses concepts for higher education funding (2 Corinthians 12:14), we readily acknowledge that this endeavor is a distant second, if that, to what we have built into our children from birth until high school graduation. For a brief window of time, we share these treasures from God; we are given the responsibilities to shepherd them, to disciple them and to model for them the joy, the trials, the mountain tops and the valleys, and the peace and presence of God through Jesus Christ.

• Choosing A College –
One of the most important steps on the life journey is that of education. Your son's or daughter’s college choice is a tremendously important decision. According to former U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett, college “should be more than merely a job-training program. It can also be a time when young people refine the convictions that will guide and mold their decisions, conduct and character”. **   Your investment in your child’s post-secondary education should be money well-spent – choose wisely.

The following article on higher education is one we consider to be of great importance. With permission, it is presented below in its entirety:

Is Your Child’s College Fostering Moral Growth?

by John Zmirak

 As The Princeton Review and the U.S. News guides to colleges make their annual appearance, another wave of American high school juniors (and their parents) look with mixed anxiety and hope at the educational prospects that face them.  As the editor of a rather different guide to U.S. schools, Choosing the Right College – which judges schools by their dedication to forming students as citizens and souls through the liberal arts – I have just put our latest edition to bed.  Indeed, I’d finished polishing the last essay on the very day I learned that Alexander Solzhenitsyn was dead.  A man who by every statistical calculation should have perished decades ago – after years in Siberian concentration camps, he contracted cancer in a third-rate Soviet hospital in 1952 – instead lived long enough to see the Class of 2013 send off their college applications.

I wonder how many members of that class have heard of this searingly brilliant writer, whose personal testimony of life in Soviet concentration camps helped finally (finally!) discredit communism among certain stubborn Western elites.  Indeed, since this year’s students were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I wonder how many of them have learned most of what they know of the Soviet Bloc from the character of Borat.

 The name “Solzhenitsyn” will always take me back to my college freshman year, since his 1978 address at Harvard was still fresh in our minds.  In fact, I spent the first few weeks of late-night bull sessions arguing about that address in my dorm, and Solzhenitsyn’s arguments went on to color my thinking for the next four years and after.  As I faced four years in a militantly secular school, where my Christian faith and patriotism were routinely attacked or scorned, Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood in the back of my mind as a witness for the defense.

Solzhenitsyn chose to use his Class Day speech at Harvard, his private audience with America’s elite, to issue a stern, prophetic warning to the West.  After three scant years living without Soviet censorship, he had concluded:

      “Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space.  Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror.  It is considered to be part of freedom…”

Having seen the astonishing contrast between the grim survivalism made necessary by socialism, and Western wealth, Solzhenitsyn observed:

      “[T]he majority of people have been granted well-being to the extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leading them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money, and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment.”

Parents wondering where to pack off the children to whose formation they have devoted the best years of their lives should do some digging, learn about the moral atmosphere, the educational norms, the drinking and drugging habits that prevail at each school their kids are considering.  They should think long and hard which vision of freedom they want their offspring to endorse – the easy optimism that in hard times simply crumbles, or the moral seriousness that can carry men and women through the worst adversities of life with their dignity intact.  As Solzhenitsyn summed up his message to the West – more relevant now than the day he delivered it:

     “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die.  Since his body is doomed to die, his task on Earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature.  It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life.  It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them.  It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.”

If your children’s college isn’t furthering that mission, it isn’t worth your money, or their time.

John Zmirak is editor of "Choosing the Right College," published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books.   Printed here with permission from Intercollegiate Studies Instutite Books.

Having emphasized the importance of choosing the right college from the perspective of moral growth, we also recognize the importance of higher education in regard to your child's economic well-being, as the following chart illustrates:

Don’t panic if your child is already in high school. While you may need to invest more money in a shorter time frame, you should still be able to afford at least a portion of college costs.

What’s more, saving for a child’s education doesn’t necessarily have to rest entirely with parents. With the flexibility and convenience of today’s savings plans, many alternatives allow education funding to be a gifting option for grandparents (Proverbs 13:22), aunts and uncles, other family members, and friends.

• Which Plan is Right for You? –
With many new college saving alternatives available, it is critical to choose the one most appropriate for you. Selecting the wrong plan – or not investing properly within the right one – can prohibit you from maximizing your savings.
              Consider the following before selecting a plan:
           •  What are the tax benefits?
           •  Who controls the funds?
           •  How much risk is involved?
           •  Are there contribution limits that may prohibit you from investing?
           •  Are lump-sum contributions subject to gift taxes?
           •  What investment options are available?

 Planning Options:
 •  529 Savings Plan
 •  529 Prepaid Plan
 •  Uniform Gifts/Transfers to Minors Act (UGMA / UTMA)
 •  Coverdell Education Savings Account
 •  Roth IRA
 •  Education Tax Incentives
        •  Hope Scholarship Credit
        •  Lifetime Learning Credit  

While education plans may seem similar, there are critical differences. While all of these plans are designed to help you pay for higher education, a particular plan or combination of plans may be more suitable for you. As part of your financial plan, we can help you choose the options most appropriate for your needs.

* World Vision Family Philanthropy Guidebook. 34834 Weyerhaeuser Way South. P.O. Box 9716. Federal Way, WA    98063-9716. www.worldvision.org
** William J. Bennett, Introduction to Choosing The Right College, The Whole Truth About America’s 100 Top Schools,    William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co. 1998.